21.6. Let the Chat Begin

GEM IN THE ROUGH Making iChat Auto-Answer When you invite another Mac to a video chat, someone has to be sitting in front of it to accept your invitation.. When someone tries to "page" y

21.6 Let the Chat Begin

As with any conversation, somebody has to talk first In chat circles, that's called inviting someone to a chat

21.6.1 They Invite You

To "turn on your pager" so you'll be notified when someone wants to chat with you, run iChat Hide its windows, if you like, by pressing -H

GEM IN THE ROUGH Making iChat Auto-Answer

When you invite another Mac to a video chat, someone has to be sitting in front

of it to accept your invitation That's an important privacy feature, of course,

because it prevents total strangers from peeking in on you when you're walking around in your underwear

But having to have a live human at the other end is kind of a bummer if you just want to peek in on your house, your kids, or your spouse while you're away,

using your iSight camera or camcorder as a sort of security cam or nannycam In the pre-Leopard days, you could set up iChat to auto-answer your video-chat

invitations only by using add-on software or geekster Terminal commands

In Leopard, though, that option is available right out of the box

Choose iChat Preferences Alerts and then turn on Run AppleScript

From the adjoining pop-up menu, choose Auto Accept From now on, iChat will love all your buddies and accept their invites immediately

When someone tries to "page" you for a chat, iChat comes forward automatically and shows you an invitation message like the one in Figure 21-4 If the person initiating a chat isn't already in your Buddy List, you'll simply see a note that says "Message from [name of the person]."

Tip: If you're getting hassled by someone on your AIM/.Mac buddy list, click his screen

name and choose Buddies Block Person If the person isn't online at the time, go to iChat Preferences Accounts Security and click the button for Block specific people Click the Edit List button, and then type in the screen name of the person you want out of your IM life

Figure 21-4 You're being invited to a chat! Your buddy wants to have a typed chat (top left) or a spoken one (top right) To begin chatting, click the invitation window, type a response in the bottom text box if you like (for text chats), and click Accept (or press Enter) Or click Decline to lock out the person sending you messages—a

good trick if someone's harassing you

GEM IN THE ROUGH iTunes by Remote Control

Thanks to some sneaky AppleScripting (Chapter 7), you can now use iChat as a glorified music-system remote control for another Mac Specifically, you can sit

at Mac #1, controlling the iTunes playback of Mac #2 elsewhere in the house

That's handy when Mac #2 is connected to your sound system, and you really

don't feel like getting up off the couch

To set it all up, start on Mac #1, the one you'll be using in person In iChat,

choose iChat Preferences Accounts Click Bonjour, and turn on Use

Bonjour Instant Messaging Close the window

On Mac #2, the one with iTunes, open iChat Choose iChat Preferences

Alerts From the Event pop-up menu, choose Message Received Turn on Run

AppleScript on this Mac, too, and then select iTunes Remote Control from the

pop-up menu

Now, while seated at Mac #1, you can control Mac #2's music playback by

typing one-word commands into iChat You can type any of these commands:

play, pause, status, next, previous, mute, unmute, or help After you type your

command (like mute when the phone rings and you're blasting Green Day), hit

the Return key to make iTunes on the other Mac obey your orders

You'll get responses in the iChat window, too For example, if you send "next," iChat types back, "Playing next track Now playing 'In This Diary' by The

Ataris.")

21.6.2 You Invite Them

To invite somebody in your Buddy List to a chat:

• For a text chat, double-click the person's name, type a quick invite ("You there?"),

and press Enter

Tip: You can invite more than one person to the chat Each time you click the +

button at the bottom of the Participants list, you can choose another person to invite (Or -click each name in the buddy list to select several people at once and then click the A button at the bottom of the list to start the text chat.)Everyone sees all the messages everyone sends

• To start an audio or video chat, click the microphone or movie-camera icon in

your Buddy List (shown in Figure 21-2)

To initiate a chat with someone who isn't in the Buddy List, choose File New Chat With Person Type the account name of the person, and then click OK to send the

invitation

Either way, you can have more than one chat going at once In the Olden Days (before October 2007), real iChat nerds often wound up with screens overflowing with individual chat windows Juggling them all, and keeping them all current, was just part of the fun— and still can be

But in modern times, you can now contain all your conversations in a single window If you like the idea of a consolidated chatspace, chose iChat Preferences Messages

and slap a checkmark in the "Collect chats into a single window" Box Figure 21-5 has the details

Figure 21-5 Now, when you're conversing with several buddies, you can bounce between conversations by clicking the buddy names on the side of the window It's not as adventurous as keeping all your chats going in separate windows, but it's a lot

easier to hide when the boss comes your way